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Author: Daniel Burrus

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Best Practices Growth Industries Management Personal Development Technology

Understanding Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning

Technological change is the only constant in today’s business world, disrupting everything from large organizations to small start-ups. Disruption affects everyone, but will you be the disruptor or the disrupted? You must pay close attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future of your industry, your business, and the outside world to identify opportunities used to innovate and grow rapidly, additionally using those Hard Trends to solve any problems your organization and customers might have before they occur.

The Power of Shared Understandings and Definitions

The shared definition and understanding of the words we use is an issue in business. While several companies are on course to use artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL), others hardly understand the fundamental differences between these powerful technologies. How can one be successful, much less disruptive, when they themselves do not differentiate between AI, ML, and DL?

Recently, technology company Sage conducted surveys pertaining to AI and individuals’ understanding of it. Unfortunately, 43% of respondents in the US and 47% of respondents in the UK indicated they had no idea what AI is capable of in business.

In addition to under-education, many vendors rush different AI solutions to market before the ultimate decision-makers and buyers understand what they need or what the technology could actually do for their companies, causing confusion both internally and externally. Add in those other AI subcategories, ML and DL, and the convolution furthers.

While advising leaders of different backgrounds around the world, I found that we all have different definitions of and understandings about AI and its counterparts. For example, I was invited to participate in a high-level strategy meeting regarding AI in Washington, DC, among experts from the Department of Defense, DARPA, and several major defense contractors.

Before the meeting began, I heard discussions regarding what some were doing with deep learning, and others were talking about the results they received from machine learning. Wondering if we all mutually understood the discussion at hand, I asked one of the experts to give their definition of machine learning, asking another thereafter. By the third person, it was clear we all had different definitions for the same thing.

A similar result occurred when I asked for the definition of deep learning, and, to my surprise, even the definition of artificial intelligence varied amongst the participants.

If we are sharing how we apply a technology but with different definitions and understandings of what it actually is, we are not effectively communicating or collaborating. In actuality, we create more problems going forward. Therefore, in my example, we spent the next part of the meeting crafting definitions that everyone agreed on.

What Exactly Is AI ∙ Machine Learning ∙ Deep Learning

Artificial intelligence applies to computing systems designed to perform tasks usually reserved for human intelligence using logic, if-then rules, and decision trees. AI recognizes patterns from vast amounts of quality data providing insights, predicting outcomes, and making complex decisions.

Machine learning is a subset of AI that utilizes advanced statistical techniques to enable computing systems to improve at tasks with experience over time. Chatbots like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri improve every year thanks to constant use by consumers coupled with the machine learning that takes place in the background.

Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that uses advanced algorithms to enable an AI system to train itself to perform tasks by exposing multilayered neural networks to vast amounts of data. It then uses what it learns to recognize new patterns contained in the data. Learning can be human-supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and/or reinforcement learning like Google used with DeepMind to learn how to beat humans at the game Go.

Autonomous computing uses advanced AI tools like deep learning to enable systems to be self-governing and capable of acting according to situational data without human command. AI autonomy includes perception, high-speed analytics, machine-to-machine communications, and movement. Autonomous vehicles use these features to pilot a vehicle without a human driver.

Augmented thinking: As AI becomes more integrated into objects, processes, products, and services, humans will augment their personal problem-solving and decision-making abilities with the insights AI provides.

It is critical for leaders and employees alike to develop a firm understanding of the fundamental differences between AI, ML, and DL. The increasing levels of business insights that can be gained from a shared understanding of AI is evident when understanding exactly how these ever-growing, disruptive technologies can be harnessed by your organization.

It is imperative for organizations and leaders to go beyond reacting quickly. Becoming anticipatory by paying attention to the Hard Trends that will happen and solving problems before they occur is imperative. Understanding AI technologies and how they build upon one another is a great start, helping your organization move swiftly into the future.

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Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development Technology

Today’s CIO: The Chief Innovation Officer

Today’s world of business is not just changing—it’s transforming. The difference is that change is doing something in an incrementally different way, while transformation is doing something so drastically different that it becomes a qualitative shift. The fact that we began watching movies on VHS tapes that we’d have to rewind, then moved to DVDs that we didn’t have to rewind, followed by Blu-ray discs for enhanced quality—that’s a change. But going from discs of any kind to a multitude of streaming services that we can watch both on our smart TVs and our mobile devices, bringing not only our movie collections but television and Internet videos with us wherever we go? That’s a transformation.

As we all know, technology made this transformation possible. I’ve spoken to CIOs who are not only using software as a service (SaaS), but who are implementing hardware as a service, connectivity as a service, collaboration as a service, and security as a service. The real excitement was around implementing everything as a service (XaaS). Clearly, IT is quickly becoming an integrated collection of intelligent services that are on-demand, on the move, and on any device.

The visual, social, virtual, and mobile transformations are creating a new golden era of technology-enabled innovation, and the CIO needs to be leading the charge.

So what has enabled the business environment to go from merely changing to transforming? It has to do with the three change accelerators I often reference in my writing: advances in computing power, bandwidth, and storage. I have tracked their exponential trajectory for years, and they have entered a new phase that has transformed every business process.

Based on technology-enabled Hard Trends that are already in place, how we sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, train, and educate will continue to transform. If you don’t anticipate the disruption that comes with this transformation, someone else will. And with all the business processes technology is transforming, nothing is transforming more than the role of the CIO.


The New Role of the CIO

The CIO’s role was traditionally in managing information, IT systems, and cost management, but it has now transformed to be one of creating new competitive advantage, new products, and new services. The CEO was the innovator, but many of today’s CEOs and their C-suite counterparts are unaware of what is technologically possible now or in the future. However, the CIO does have interest, access, and the understanding of that type of information and knowledge, which is why the CIO position needs to transform into the Chief Innovation Officer.

Of course, not all CIOs will embrace their new role. As our environment transforms, human nature is to stagnate, as we are drawn to comfort. Many will be far too busy doing what they have always done, and many will spend a lot of time protecting and defending the status quo solely because they’re familiar with it. We know how it works and we have an investment in it that has made a lot of money for us and gotten us to where we are today. Therefore, the mindset is that we have to protect and defend it in any way we can.

An additional burden the CIO has is the nature of their work itself. They have to maintain the existing system to make sure it’s working in order to keep the organization running smoothly during the transforming period. But if all you’re doing is maintaining what’s already there, then you hold a legacy role and your relevance is decreasing every day. So while you do have to maintain your current and past systems, you also have to spend some time truly innovating, as innovation is increasingly technology-driven and the CIO is in a perfect position to be the driver of it.

Ultimately, it’s about increasing your professional and personal relevance, paying close attention to the Hard Trends transforming your industry and becoming more anticipatory as to what digital disruptions are heading your way and causing disruption before someone else disrupts you and your organization. For example, the old way was about technology centricity; the new way is about technology-empowered business strategies. The old way was information management; the new way is information intelligence. The old way was IT systems management; the new way is platforms that enable new value chains. The old way was cost management; the new way is business transformation and rapid growth.

The ability to innovate has never been easier and has never happened faster. In today’s transformational business landscape, you must anticipate disruption and change, turning it into opportunity and advantage. If you don’t change the focus of your CIO role, someone else will.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Industries Technology

The Cybersecurity of Healthcare

Prior to 1992, the thought of cyberwar, cybersecurity and hacking was predominantly constrained to Hollywood fantasy. Fast-forward to present times, when connectivity is commonplace, and the level of data breaches and hacking has become horrifyingly real.

The reality is that every day, our data is used or even copied, often without us knowing. As a generation that willfully inputs their information on multiple websites, we seem to concern ourselves less with the concept of cybersecurity until disaster strikes.

Trust Must Be Earned

In contrast to not fully considering the importance of cybersecurity, we greatly consider our trust in a company with our data, like our bank, our hospital, our insurance companies, our primary retailer or even the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). We’re quick to assume that if they ask for our sensitive information, they must be taking security measures to prevent that data from being leaked into the wrong hands.

We can never be too sure that a company or even the whole industry is up to the cybersecurity standards that must be utilized in today’s ever-changing digital world. Shockingly, one large industry that suffers financially from data breaches and hacking is the healthcare industry.

Generally, one would think that healthcare and all the sensitive data involved should be buttoned up pretty tightly, but it is quite the contrary. The overall cost of a healthcare breach is about $408 per patient record, not including the loss of business, productivity, and reputation of the entity involved.

Annually, the healthcare industry sees $5 billion in costs to correct data breaches, hacking and all-around poor cybersecurity measures. In addition to the cost to find a solution to these errors, healthcare entities are being fined by the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, sometimes as much as $28 million annually.

Why So Costly?

The steepness of these fines is the result of a lack of preventative measures. The severity of a data breach in the healthcare industry is immense, where once the damage is done, it is essentially permanent. So, who is responsible once a patient’s records have been breached, and what are the repercussions of this? Financial penalties are prevalent; however, what about breached trust? Is there permanent damage between the patient and the entity?

If a customer goes to a local store and the customer’s data is stolen, the trust the customer had is almost instantly gone, like in Target’s hacking issue, where customers ultimately boycotted shopping there as a result.

Now imagine going to your doctor about personal medical issues, only to be contacted later in the week about how all your personal information is in someone else’s hands now. You would feel incredibly violated and likely wonder if even your doctor was the reason it got out.

Hacking a School

Hackers traditionally target industries with a lot of data and very little security. School districts are examples of this in recent years, the reason being the lack of funds and tight budgets they have to spend on internal cybersecurity.

In contrast, the healthcare industry has a much larger budget in all capacities, making it questionable as to why they seem to be behind the ball. How can a hospital better anticipate what’s to come by realizing the Hard Trend of cyberattacks and pre-solve problems before they occur?

Finding a Solution in Anticipation

A cyber-risk assessment is an option, with many hospitals using a more cost-effective outside vendor to do the job. Preventing cybercrimes is a 24-hour-a-day venture with criminals pinging systems thousands of times a day, so it would greatly benefit healthcare entities to outsource this responsibility to a company with the capacity to monitor security around the clock.

As an entrepreneur, it is safe to assume that cyberattacks on sensitive data hubs in healthcare are a Hard Trend, with the cybersecurity market for healthcare being a burgeoning one with a greater purpose. But if cybersecurity is not your passion, cyber insurance is another option, where covered entities must conduct a thorough assessment of the threats and vulnerabilities, implement reduction measures, and ensure that any vendor or organization handling private health information is security compliant.

Both criminally savvy individuals and the rapid advancement of digital technology are Hard Trends; therefore, healthcare companies and outside entrepreneurs alike should pre-solve future problems before they become disastrous and use their anticipatory mindsets to help move the healthcare industry safely forward.

If you would like a free perimeter test to check for vulnerabilities in your cybersecurity defense system, please contact us. We have identified best-in-class cyber testing companies that will provide the results of their tests and recommend immediate actions that can be taken to stop any uncovered leaks in your system. 

Ask for your free perimeter test at: https://www.burrus.com/contact-us/ 

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Best Practices Culture Growth Health and Wellness Industries Leadership Technology

Smart Cities – Seeing the Invisible and Doing the Impossible

The word “impossible” connotes something that cannot be done. But we all know the impossible isn’t completely out of reach. For centuries, humans have been achieving the so-called impossible by developing conceptual understanding and making visible that which we’ve been previously unable to conceive. When we develop this sort of understanding, previously unknown opportunities and solutions become clear — doing the impossible then becomes just a matter of commonsense problem-solving.

A new iteration of this concept is appearing in cities around the world. Data analytics and technological innovations provide new levels of clarity when it comes to issues like sustainability, pollution, energy conservation, and crime, giving us greater insight into how the many different facets of our cities truly function. Both local leaders and major companies are paying attention to these Hard Trends, becoming more anticipatory in their thinking and thus developing a solution by creating “smart cities.”

Transforming Our Cities

Cities themselves present an array of challenges: CNBC reports that 55% of the world’s population now lives in cities, being mostly responsible for the world’s energy consumption. These numbers mean our urban resources, including water, energy, and even the police, are under considerable, unsustainable strain.

However, high-speed data analytics allow urbanites to more clearly see their resource consumption, providing clear, pragmatic solutions to the crises our cities face. These crises are considered a Soft Trend — a pattern that we can change through Anticipatory thinking and technological prowess. By making our cities part of the Internet of Things (IoT), we can gather high-speed data analytics and transform our cities into smart cities.

For example, during a DOT Smart City Challenge, where cities planned smart solutions to address transportation, sanitation, connectivity, and safety issues in their communities, Denver pitched to increase public and private electric vehicle use, install pedestrian detection systems at intersections to improve safety, and establish a connected freight system, allowing trucks to coordinate deliveries to reduce congestion. Denver was awarded $6 million to fund the connected vehicle network and pedestrian detection system.

Another fantastic example of transportation efficiency was pitched by Columbus, Ohio. During the DOT Smart City Challenge, Columbus pitched the idea of a connected platform to improve resident and visitor mobility, which involved creating an integrated “multimodal trip planning/common payment system application,” simplifying the sharing economy for commuters. Cities often have several different transportation apps, including a variety for parking and public transit, but by creating a single app that allows residents to pay for all modes of transportation, mobility around the city becomes simpler and thus improves access to available options.

Smart City Benefits

Smart cities can be utilized in resource conservation, which is paramount to cities the world over. Even something as simple as a “smart meter” for energy or water usage can drastically reduce costs and conserve resources by 20% to 25%. Trends for 2019 in smart city water technology empower utility customers to reduce water loss. A growing number of utilities are engaging their customers in helping to manage their water usage. Water utility customers have access to engagement tools, enabling them to see their personal consumption data daily, hourly, monthly, and annually via their devices, empowering and educating them. This helps mitigate questions about water rate increases or leaks and reduces response time — all of which can improve efficiency and support water conservation efforts.

While getting citizens to truly care about conservation and sustainability in their cities might be somewhat of a Sisyphean task, everyone cares about local crime. England has roughly one CCTV camera for every 11 citizens, coining it the “most-watched country in the world.” But when Verizon installed CCTV video monitoring in several U.S. cities to create real-time situational awareness, crime was reduced across the board by 5% to 20%, and these cities saved an average of $1.50 for every dollar spent.

This notion of saving money in the long run by spending a little bit of money now seems lost on many cities. By refusing to make these simple financial concessions, city leaders are essentially using legacy thinking to solve tomorrow’s problems today. Saying no has become a financial and environmental liability; it’s much more expensive to say no to the kind of technology that stands to provide huge quality-of-life increases for your city.

Part of changing this system of governmental city management relies on educating mayors to city planners in learning to think in a more anticipatory way. The local heroes of tomorrow, the ones who get re-elected and really push their cities forward, will adopt my Hard Trend Methodology — that is, paying attention to the trends that will happen — and the emergence of new technology to benefit their cities and the people they serve.

Check out my new Anticipatory Leader System, I’ll teach you my Hard Trend Methodology and how to use it to elevate. Your business and personal strategies to transform results.

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Best Practices Culture Growth Human Resources Leadership Skills Technology

Increase Employee Skills to Decrease Talent Shortages

When it comes to the future of your industry, how secure do you feel, not only in your position but in your career and abilities as well? The era in which you go to school for a specific skill or trade, develop your acumen and grow a career until retirement has passed. The future of your career doesn’t depend on whether employment is available at a given company; it depends on how employable you are. This requires constant learning to be proactive in refining the skills you have to fit the market in its current state, as well as its ever-changing demands.

We’re Living in Transformational Times 

As the Three Digital Accelerators (bandwidth, computing power, and storage) continuously grow, new positions emerge in the tech sector, and traditional jobs get overhauled. This means the skills required to do these jobs change, and it’s up to both employees and employers to keep up with these trends.

If your job description isn’t already changing, it probably will in the near future. You can’t afford to stand still in your career like generations past. You can’t simply coast along and not pursue more training or a better education tailored to the skills you’ll find yourself needing.

Many unemployed or underemployed individuals are still having difficulty landing jobs. Even working professionals looking to make a move, whether lateral or upward, are finding difficulty in locating open positions suited to their particular abilities. But blaming the economy is now a misperception: in our ever-shifting economic landscape and technological evolution, many once-common jobs are disappearing. Simultaneously, new roles are opening up, but companies are experiencing difficulty filling these positions.

Specific Skill Sets Needed?

Even many traditional roles, such as medical technicians, machinists, construction workers, or even nurses, are harder to fill because of a lack of up-to-date skills. These are relatively common jobs in our economic landscape; they shouldn’t be too difficult to fill. However, most of these jobs call for developed, nuanced skills that can grow in lockstep with our technologically advancing economy. But it’s starting to look like many professionals aren’t keeping up with the evolving skill demands of their industries.

In addition to these more traditional jobs being difficult to fill, a slew of new roles and professions are offering untapped potential for workers with the right technical knowledge. In the tech sector, the ability to negotiate and manipulate data to extract actionable knowledge has become invaluable. Freelancer, an online outsourcing platform, claims data scientists are in high demand, along with people experienced in the eCommerce arena and the ever-increasing advent of wearable tech.

This disconnect between talent, necessary skill, and employment doesn’t hinge entirely on employees. Many employers are having trouble addressing what’s now being viewed as a serious talent shortage. These employers are failing to meet the changing needs of the economy, especially with respect to teaching new skills to new hires. Even when applicants have the required skill sets, many are looking for higher starting salaries than most talent-strapped companies are willing to offer.

According to the results of a Talent Shortage Survey from ManpowerGroup, 45% of employers globally claim that they can’t find the skills they need. This is up from 40% in 2017 and is the highest it has been in over a decade. The ones most affected by the shortage are large companies of 250 or more employees.

The Solution? 

ManpowerGroup suggests employers overhaul best practices when it comes to recruiting, like redefining qualifying criteria and conveying the image of their organizations as a destination for valued talent with a culture of learning and employee encouragement.

For both employees and employers, education is key. Prospective employees need to be more anticipatory and pay attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future of their industries while continuously augmenting their skill sets in order to remain employable. By studying the Hard Trends I’ve outlined, career-minded individuals will predict what sorts of skills they’ll need to develop and where opportunity for employment may lie.

As for employers facing a talent shortage, they need to develop new recruiting methods and be willing to provide necessary additional training to new hires. From both sides, it’s clear that the most important aspect of this talent and employment shortage is the pursuit of modernized knowledge.

What are you doing to stay ahead of the curve in your industry? How are you growing your career by being anticipatory? Just how employable are you, given the transformational changes that are yet to come?

Learn to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage with my latest book The Anticipatory Organization. Don’t wait, get your copy today at www.TheAOBook.com.

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Best Practices Growth Industries Leadership Personal Development Technology

Humanizing Your Digital Communications

Video conferencing has been around for a long time. The equipment is usually kept in a special room, always booked by executives due to the high value they derive in using it to enhance their collaborations.

On the other hand, digital communications is very different by definition. Digital communications can take place using your laptop, your tablet, your smartphone, and even your watch, as the software is free, and the quality of the video is at an all-time high. Tech companies, such as Facebook, are now beginning to roll out more devices, such as the Portal, aimed at enhancing digital communications yet again.

However, the heaviest hitter in corporate digital communication is Zoom Communications. Zoom offers services that are now reliable enough for companies to migrate to, using Zoom as a primary means of communication. Zoom’s simplicity, improved security assurance, and rapid increase in visual and audio quality has made it favorable in comparison to the more traditional, in-house video conferencing systems I referred to earlier.

Digitization Disruption

Once again, we find that digitization is disrupting our everyday business activities. This isn’t exactly a surprise, as I’ve mentioned over time, digital disruption comes in waves, and every single industry, no matter if it is construction or IT security, will be disrupted. If your industry has not yet been digitally disrupted, it is likely on the horizon. If disruption has already occurred, it is time for you to start becoming more anticipatory, pay attention to the hard trends that are already shaping the future of your industry, and expect yet another wave of new disruptions that includes new opportunities as well.

While Zoom offers companies the possibility of connecting to meetings both visually and by way of company mobile phones, savvy companies recognize the abilities for employee engagement utilizing other features, such as white-boarding and meeting recording options.

In an increasingly globalized work environment, it was not always possible to meet clients face-to-face for the last several decades. Companies relied on telephones as a means of connecting with distant clients if they didn’t have access to a video conferencing system. But now with visual communications like Zoom, we’ve come full circle. Ironically and pleasantly enough, digitization, in this case, hasn’t taken us to an even more abstract, conceptualized means of communication. It has actually given communications a human face.

The Both/And Principle

In past articles, I’ve discussed the Both/And Principle. The new doesn’t replace the old. In fact, recognizing the interplay between the new and old is an incredibly useful first step in developing an entrepreneurial mindset. With Zoom, we see both online and in-person interactions mixing together, along with online collaboration between everyone given Zoom’s features.

This reflects and incorporates the more dynamic interactions companies have in today’s business environment. It allows for on-the-fly additions to conferences and opens up businesses to new interactions in a safer and secure space thanks to Zoom’s encryption capabilities.

Audio and visual quality now being at a higher level makes online conferencing more efficient. This is only one aspect, albeit a major one, as there are still more possibilities and opportunities to discover in the field of visual communications.

The Future of Digital Communication

Developers are still testing the ways in which visual communications can be pushed further, such as the recording of all communications over these platforms, their easy accessibility for analysis, and troubleshooting. Undoubtedly, digitization opens up visual communications to the benefits of big data. Digitization also provides businesses with easy access to support systems. Tech support can easily access a company’s network to fix any issues. This streamlines a process that once involved sitting on hold for hours with an external customer service center.

One thing is certain: The three digital accelerators being exponential advances in processing power, digital storage, and bandwidth will continue to provide new and powerful functionality to all forms of visual communications, as this highly personal method of dialogue and discourse becomes an even more dominant, prevalent means of communication with businesses around the globe.

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Best Practices Culture Economics Entrepreneurship Industries Investing Management Personal Development Technology

5G Entrepreneurs Creating Billion-Dollar Businesses

Within the next five years…

New multibillion-dollar businesses will appear that didn’t exist before due to 5G wireless technology. Because of this, many industries will either be agile, reacting to an ever-increasing number of 5G innovators disrupting their industry, or they will be anticipatory innovators and use the predictability of 5G capabilities to become the disruptor.

The first generation (1G) of wireless came with the introduction of cell phones constrained to phone calls and high-level executives. The second-generation (2G) gave us better call quality for wireless phones and offered a new capability for text messaging via SMS. The third-generation (3G) facilitated mobile internet browsing and early video calling.

Most recently, 4G brought us useful multimedia networked computers with media-rich streaming applications like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, and more.

Up next is 5G.

This generation of wireless technology is already being deployed in major cities in the U.S. and other countries. Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Broadcom, as well as network providers AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, are all putting in maximum effort, with mobile device manufacturers starting to launch their first 5G-enabled devices.

While consumers have become jaded to the 5G terms as seen in commercials, there are many consumer and business implementations of 5G to be excited about. Once deployed and fully operational, 5G would essentially be the solution to deliver complete digital connectivity from the tip of the carrier network and essentially be the death of cables in homes and offices alike.

As it stands today, 5G would function as a set of simultaneous revolutions, all of which must function without any trouble whatsoever, in order to provide the speed and connectivity it boasts. Some hiccups actually go beyond technological functionality and spill into business and social conflicts:

  • Unified Carriers. 5G wireless would essentially place companies like AT&T, Verizon, and the combined T-Mobile and Sprint in competition against Comcast and Charter Communications for services. 
  • Remade Landscapes. 5G allows for smaller transmitters that consume lower power, with smaller 5G transmitters covering much smaller service areas than those typical 4G towers. A carrier would need about four hundred times more than we currently have, camouflaged in urban areas. 
  • Restructured Global Technology Economy. Upon implementing 5G, areas such as Scandinavia where Nokia and Ericsson reside would become the primary hub for telecommunications, and China Mobile and Huawei are jointly responsible for the architecture of 5G, making China more powerful in the data world than the U.S.

The cost is of most concern in many cases. Prices for service would most likely start out pretty high compared to where we are now, covering the costs to implement the technology.

In several articles of mine, I’ve called on anticipatory businesses and individuals to pay attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future both inside and outside of their industries, and the digital disruptors that may affect them directly or indirectly. Implementation of 5G would certainly jump-start those disruptions.

The following are perfect examples of technology-driven changes I’ve discussed in previous articles and their correlation to 5G technology:

  • Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications and Driverless Automobiles. 5G will enable Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication, using the low latency of 5G wireless networking, allowing each vehicle to know exactly what all the other vehicles are doing around it.
  • Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Ultra-fast connectivity and synchronicity are important for the user experience, as video communication within corporations will be meshing with VR as remote employees take virtual tours of a manufacturing plant with individuals who are physically there. In the AR world, the very infrastructure of AR glasses and other AR technology is contingent on high-speed connectivity with the amount of data present.
  • Cloud Computing. 5G wireless has the potential for distributed cloud computing services, creating near real-time experiences with edge computing that are much more engaging to users than Amazon, Google, or Microsoft are today.
  • Internet of Things (IoT). Everything from kitchen appliances to parking meters can all be made easier to produce, easier to control, and more connected than ever before. 5G transmitters will become IoT hubs, acting as real-time service hubs for all the households in their specific coverage areas.
  • Healthcare. The availability of low-latency connectivity in extremely remote locations such as Mississippi, where trials of 5G connectivity are implemented, would connect individuals to remote medical professionals for information.

By being anticipatory, many telecommunication providers are pre-solving problems with 5G before they occur by way of moving customers into a 5G business track before most true 5G services exist. It is the perfect time for you and your organization to anticipate what’s to come, and more importantly, what is to be affected by 5G in your industry. By paying attention to the Hard Trends shaping the future, you can stay ahead of the curve to avoid falling behind.

To be certain of the Hard Trends shaping your future, get a copy of my latest book The Anticipatory Organization – I have a special offer for you!

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Industries Investing Leadership Technology

Auto Insurance Industry: Disrupted or Disruptor?

Today, we have fully electric vehicles with AI-enabled semi-autonomous features, as well as fully autonomous vehicle applications. But how has this affected insurance premiums, and will those changes deter you from buying a specific “vehicle of the future”?

Presently, most vehicles still put you in the driver’s seat and in control, leaving your insurance unaffected. But now that we have more autonomous features than ever to make the roads safer, insurance is changing.

Disruptive innovator Elon Musk and Tesla have been in the limelight for good and bad reasons in this space. The good being a computerized system more adept and attentive than human beings, but the bad is that initial versions of these features have been limited. Couple that with the fact that there are currently fewer Tesla automobiles on highways than Fords or Chevys, many buying a Tesla will quickly notice their insurance premiums skyrocket.

Auto Insurance Is Changing

For example, entrepreneur Dan Peate, who founded the group health insurance provider Hixme, was deterred from getting himself a Tesla Model X after he discovered that his premiums would accelerate to roughly $10,000 a year. Why should the price vary so much, especially since semi-autonomous features are specifically manufactured to be safer on the roads? If you find yourself pondering this as well, you are definitely identifying the Hard Trend that more semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles will emerge every year.

Dan Peate identified this Hard Trend and became more anticipatory in his thinking, moving to start a wave of disruption from within the insurance industry. He founded Avinew, a new insurance company that monitors drivers’ use of autonomous features on cars and determines insurance premium discounts based on how and when autonomous features are used.

Avinew has agreements with most manufacturers and customers, allowing it to access driving data in real time and utilizing the data gathered to cut insurance premiums, rather than after accidents occur.

Underwriters and actuaries base insurance prices on the type of risk, and oftentimes they charge more due to not having enough data, as the risk is the unknown and not that the vehicle puts you in danger.

With the interconnectivity of the world today, change is in motion. Policyholders have a more dynamic and interactive relationship with insurers, and much like decentralized currency, have more accurate accounts of transactions. In this case, the frequency of usage of autonomous and semi-autonomous features eliminates frivolous insurance costs.

Some insurers call this an existential crisis, but it is actually a chance for entrepreneurs to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage by learning to be anticipatory.

Research conducted at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey indicates that premiums could drop 12.5 percent by 2035 with this new wave of auto disruption, and that product lines centered around autonomous features will offset some of the loss, but the gains will remain far behind.

Forecasts like this might make the insurance industry feel like it has plenty of time. After all, that same research above estimates that by 2035, there will still only be 23 million autonomous vehicles on American roads, which is less than 10 percent of today’s total. The problem is they fail to use the Both/And principle, one I have taught for decades that aided me in maintaining a high level of forecasting accuracy. Researchers in the auto industry fall into the trap of thinking future vehicles will either be fully autonomous or not autonomous at all (Either/Or thinking).

Higher Risk?

The future fact is that fully autonomous vehicles will be higher risk due to potential hacking and technology failure issues than semi-autonomous vehicles, so we will see rapid growth in semi-autonomous cars as well as older cars being fitted with semi-autonomous crash-avoidance systems. Fully autonomous vehicles will increase in areas where their use is less risky. At any rate, the numbers of vehicles with semi-autonomous and fully autonomous capabilities will grow far faster than most are projecting.

The insurance industry must move on this faster than projected or be disrupted by anticipatory outsiders. Insurance is needed, but the risk is shifting to vehicle manufacturers, software providers, and tech component system providers. Following this shift to find opportunity will be a key to growth in the years ahead. If the risk is less human and more systemic, said risk becomes systematic and more predictable and preventable.

One way an entrepreneur could look at this and anticipate what is to come is by paying less attention to what Dan Peate and Avinew are currently doing, and focus on what will disrupt them in the coming years. There are individual opportunities for existing insurance companies to anticipate, adapt and grow, or stagnate and fail. The good news is that by using the Hard Trend Methodology, you have a choice.

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Disruptor Watch — How Disruptors Can Learn From Their Forebears

In today’s economic landscape, many companies look to be the “disruptor” instead of the “disrupted.” They want to identify a new niche in their industries or solve a problem people are unaware of, introducing next-gen technology and unprecedented business methods.

However, with every disruptive tech company, there are obvious caveats and pitfalls to note, and it behooves would-be entrepreneurs and innovators to observe and learn from both the successes and the mistakes of their recent forebears.

Disruptive Photo Technology 

Focal Media Group is the creator and producer of the StyleShoots photography machine. StyleShoots puts more power in the hands of major fashion retailers and the creative agencies they work with. Essentially, the machine automates much of the work associated with photo editing, such as basic Photoshopping. Its interface is extremely user-friendly, enabling someone with very little photography experience to create consistent, high-quality imagery, allowing major fashion retailers and brands to cut down on production costs and time to market. For creative agencies, StyleShoots turns around quality content much quicker than before, freeing agencies up to compete for more business and putting them ahead of their competition.

While this technology could have wide applications in the photography world, fashion product photography is already seeking to carve out a niche for itself before expanding. By relegating itself to the world of fashion product photography, Focal Media Group has already gained a slew of high-profile brands as clients, such as Macy’s, Triumph, Forever 21, Zalando, Woolworths, and Scotch & Soda. It has also sold StyleShoots machines to major creative agencies, such as Pure Red and Undefeated Creative.

However, it would still behoove the Focal Media Group to pay attention to its recent forebears and to take close note of their respective successes and shortcomings. Here are some things Focal Media Group should be willing to address:

Lowering the Barrier of Entry

While the StyleShoots machine is being adopted by major fashion retailers, very few people in the industry are aware of the savings and added revenue it could provide. This means Focal Media Group could stand to use both social and traditional media to expand its marketing campaign in order to create awareness. If the only thing preventing a product from turning its target industry upside down is awareness, a solid marketing campaign will prove invaluable, as other recent successes have discovered.

Learning from Airbnb

I’ve written extensively about companies like Airbnb — how they’ve disrupted their respective industries and succeeded at creating enormous, widely acclaimed brands and user experiences. However, these organizations have succeeded hugely in some areas of business and failed spectacularly in others.

Let’s look at how a company like Focal Media Group can benefit from paying attention to what Airbnb’s been doing these past few years.

In the documentary Design Disruptors, Airbnb Head of Experience Design Katie Dill provides insight into what makes the company so effective from a design standpoint. Essentially, Airbnb leverages design and aesthetics to facilitate a better overall user experience, which has clearly proved successful.

In Design Disruptors, Dill explains that the design team is not a “design” team but an “experience” team, considering everything a user explores in Airbnb’s platform as an overarching brand experience. Airbnb includes its community in its experience design processes, effectively touting design as a means to create a more comprehensive, friendlier, and beautiful user experience, which is key to the success of any startup.

Focal Media Group would do well to focus on creating a user experience that makes prospective clients feel at ease, like they can easily operate the StyleShoots machine or teach their colleagues how to use it. The experience should also explicitly illustrate how brands, retailers, and agencies stand to benefit from using StyleShoots and its related products for their photography.

Pay attention to what people are saying about you in real-time. Pay closer attention to both the quality of your product, user experience, and how you can keep it as high as possible. If you have an amazing product and a friendly, inviting user experience with an easy-to-use interface, you likely won’t have to worry about a PR blowback or unhappy customers.

Focal Media Group and its StyleShoots machine is only one pertinent example out of thousands of startups seeking to disrupt their respective industries. But if you’re a company on the verge of disrupting a major industry, you would do well to observe your more successful and noteworthy predecessors, to mark both their successes and their failures to better your own company and more effectively facilitate the disruption you seek to implement.

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Life-Size Hologram for Speakers, Educators, and Entertainers

We’ve seen it in sci-fi movies, television series, and the music and entertainment world. Now, you’re going to see it on the lecture circuit and more!

With the help of holographic telepresence pioneer ARHT Media, I now offer the opportunity for organizations worldwide to have a life-size 3D hologram of myself beamed in anywhere in the world to deliver a live presentation, interacting with the audience via monitor as if I were physically there while being in an ARHT Media studio.

In the audience location, an ARHT Media tech will set up and run the equipment conveniently for the meeting or convention planners, and given that there are many ARHT Media locations globally, travel costs are very reasonable regardless of where the meeting is located.

We can also pre-record a customized presentation for the client using the special ARHT Media equipment and send it with the technician and holographic projection equipment to the audience location, eliminating both the need for a high bandwidth connection and any logistical conflicts on my end.

My goal is to greatly exceed clients’ meeting expectations while maintaining the integrity of my in-person presentations by being interactive and customized to the specific audience and industry. Before I delve into the benefits this technology has to offer, let’s first discuss ARHT Media.

CEO Larry O’Reilly is a successful global business development executive who transformed the IMAX brand from a museum theater experience to a billion-dollar global commercial distribution channel for IMAX and Hollywood films. O’Reilly and ARHT are also impacting service industry professionals in the medical field, the government, and more. While the bar is raised every day in the world of technology, let’s think for a second about how this could impact other industries.

It’s safe to say that holographic telepresence represents an increasing Hard Trend shaping the future of the presentation and performance industries, but how does it disrupt other industries?

A Positive Disruption

Take the education field, for example. Currently, at universities, professors teach three courses a semester, with additional courses taken on by adjuncts. Holographic telepresence makes it entirely possible for a professor to teach the same course multiple times over simultaneously with a life-size hologram beamed into an overflow lecture hall, and the disrupted adjunct could go into business for themselves, beaming themselves into college classrooms around the world as needed.

Consider an industry that is always disrupted: music. As of today, streaming services offer infinite residual income per listen, with the new issue being the microscopic amount the artist receives. Therefore, artists live on the road, selling merchandise and performing constantly. How could a band or entertainer be more anticipatory in their thinking on how to deal with the struggles of today’s music industry?

Imagine a world where they could mix live performance with holographic telepresence, performing live for select dates and as a hologram for others. Some may prefer all holograms due to illness, age, or other factors, performing live from their own studio to anywhere in the world while interacting directly with the audience in real time.

Aside from alleviating the travel woes, consider the cost savings. It costs a lot to put on a performance. The artist could capitalize on this technology financially by way of making ticket sales to hologram shows less expensive, depending on the setup; merchandise could come down in cost, and they could keep more of what they deserve for writing music we all love.

Of course, much like any innovative technology, the question remains: Will it be as good?

The Experience

Being a public speaker myself, I understand that many people reading this right now may be skeptical of how this technology would be received, or think their presentation would be less visceral if it wasn’t in person. Believe me, nothing is more powerful than being somewhere in person; however, the reality is it is an impossibility to be everywhere at once, and with the growing demand for instant gratification in the world today, how does an entrepreneur offering an in-person experience stretch themselves thinner than they already are?

The answer is holographic telepresence coupled with human performance, and this is the perfect example of the facilitation of capitalizing on being human in a more time-conscious way. When a client wants me to deliver a keynote speech at an event, I now offer several options, as I mentioned above, including my regular live presentation. Being known as a technology futurist and disruptive innovation expert, I demonstrate said expertise in my actual delivery of the presentation via holographic telepresence technology.

The world is always evolving, and technological disruption has always occurred; we are just noticing it now more than ever. However, if you pay attention to the hard trends that are shaping your industry, both inside and out, you’ll start to anticipate what’s to come and capitalize on new, game-changing opportunities.

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A Life-Size Hologram is an impressive way for Daniel Burrus to deliver his keynote presentation. Please contact our office to bring Daniel’s Hologram Keynote to your next event.